Album Review: Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, The Deepest Breath

The son of a classical violinist and a Connemara sean-nós singer, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, forges his own path on The Deepest Breath, resulting in a remarkable record embracing both the traditional and the modern.

On opener ‘Anáil na hOíche’, the same moon races across the Twelve Bens as the Five Lamps – Ó Ceannabháin encompassing both soils - town and country. His vocal, beautiful and spiralling, echoes through Ireland’s past, evoking a Banba for the soul. His Irish delivery is so exquisite, it’ll have you reaching for your Peig.

On ‘Dublin City Fever Dream’, he shifts into English, tracking a path across the godless capital, doused in a bacchanal revelry, far below the gaze of suited mandarins behind mirrored windows.

‘Ringing That Bell’ is the ensuing hangover, the bell tolling for Dublin, as she lies in her blacked-out bedsit hell, lamenting lost loves, haunted by the ghosts in her head, for “some stories hurt too much to tell, there are fires only drink can quell.”

The track, originally by Rob Corcoran, fiercely lambasts the first estate – “I’ll drink a curse to the sacred heart, and all sanctimonious cunts out there / From Letterfrack to St. Peter’s Square / No more holy than Cromwell / Still they keep on ringing that bell.”

Elsewhere, the harmonic lilting on ‘Cat & Gealach’ is delightful; his immersive a capella vocal on ‘Róisín Dubh’ is sublime; and the colossal soundscape – including mystical whale song – on ‘Only The Earth’ is incredible. The title track, meanwhile, is the icing on the cake.

9/10